The Architecture of the Rachofsky House

This last weekend, I attended two lectures on architecture at the Rachofsky House. The house was between exhibitions, with no art installed inside; so the house itself was the "star."

The first lecture, by Director Allan Schwartzman, was on how architects for art institutions sometimes seem to be trying, perhaps unconsciously, to upstage the art. The second lecture was by Thomas Phifer, who designed the Rachofsky House while with Richard Meier's group, concerning the house and some projects he's worked on since. (Unfortunately, I had to miss Charissa Terranova's talk on "The Utopian Drives of Conceptual Architecture: Avant-Garde Architecture in the 1960s and Architectural Theory.")

I enjoyed the talks I saw very much. Schwartzman discussed various aspects of the house and collecting for it, such as the fact that there are no large interior walls for larger art works with views from an adequate distance that aren't impinged upon by various disjunctions, pillars, ceilings, railings, etc., and he also discussed other art institutional buildings that "don't want" art.

There's no shortage of large walls outside, however.

Once you get past the initial wall that greets you as you pull into the driveway, you're confronted with the nearly-solid wall of the front of the house. Phifer compared it to the facade of a Venetian palace and made reference to a separation between public and private space. I'll grant that; it's also shaped like an elongated ping-pong paddle, with rather few, relatively small chinks. It does not invite me in – indeed, without a greeter, one might have trouble finding the door. Rather, it bounces me back across an unusually large, flat, green lawn, divided into quadrants by Robert Irwin's brilliant land art installation. (No one mentioned the resemblance of the property to a game of table tennis.)

In back of the house, another prominent wall abuts a long staircase from the second floor to the back yard garden. If you're on the staircase, the wall segregates you from both the garden and the largest gathering space within the house, grouping you instead with not much besides the tallest hedge I've ever seen (another wall).

I understand Mr. Rachofsky originally planned to reside in the house even while it also served as a public building; the concern Phifer mentioned to separate public and private spaces may well have given rise to these walls.

One part of the house that feels surprisingly welcoming for both art and people is the glass-encased, north-side landing half-way between the first and second floor. Interestingly, although the visual chosen for the Rachofsky House info page on the house itself shows the ping-pong table view, the visual for the House as an art institution foregrounds this northern landing (here).

UPDATE: Additional details and thoughts about these talks are set out in the comments to this post.

Sadie Benning's "Play Pause" at the Images Fest

at the Power Plant, Toronto – wish I could see this!

More on Sadie Benning's work at Video Data Bank.

"Blueprint" at The M.A.C.

(in Dallas), curated by James Cope of the Goss-Michael Foundation, the show includes work by Brian Fridge, Amy Revier, Ted Setina, and Paul Slocum.

For Slocum's triptych, Skiing cat, Heathcliff, Garfield (2009), he appropriated an image of the cat and cleaned up the resolution, then created two more rather eery, Garfield-ish images, including the one at right. Also included in the show is Slocum's One frame of a GIF animation printed and hung above a video projection of the same animation scaled to approximately 66%, which is well worth seeing in the flesh. Slocum is represented by Dunn and Brown Contemporary.

Setina's most impressive piece, Concentrations # 2:DOPP[L(E)(L)REFLE[X(CT)ION] (2009), involves a video projected onto a free-standing, frosted glass screen mounted on a low white pedestal (note: a related piece has a similar title, punctuated slightly differently; the foregoing title is as shown on the List of Works available at The M.A.C.) In the video, a life-size Setina, wearing a white space suit, is on his hands and knees – which seem to rest directly on the white pedestal – and he appears to be vomiting. On the pedestal beneath Setina's head is a one half of a large, dark red pool – on the side of the screen away from the projector and toward center of the room; the half of the pool that should be on the other side of the screen is missing. (The image is a documentation photo shot during the filming of the video.)

There's a lot to think about re- these and other works in the show, so check it out; through Sat., Oct. 10. More info at The M.A.C.'s site.

Rome to Be Re-Built in a Day

at the Arthouse in Austin, TX, and you're invited to help; starting Friday, Sept. 25 at midnite. From the ArtHouse website:

A durational, participatory model-building extravaganza and dynamic history lesson, The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project is a recreation of the ancient capital city in historical order. Over the course of 24 hours, more than a millennium of Roman history is brought to life. . . . [the project] unfolds at approximately 1.238 years per minute, beginning at midnight with the building of Romulus and Remus’ huts in 753 B.C.E. and ending 24 hours later as Alaric and the Visigoths sack the mini-empire in 410 C.E. The city’s rise and fall takes place within Arthouse’s walls, under the direction of Los Angeles-based artist Liz Glynn, and with the help of diverse Austin community collaborators and energetic volunteers. The giddy, almost manic progress is photographed and recorded as night becomes day and day becomes night. The city is constructed from salvaged building materials, like wood and cardboard, while special guests enact climatic moments of Roman history. Musical performances, poetry readings, scholarly lectures, architectural tours, hands-on workshops, athletic competitions and feasts are among the many planned events and activities that breathe life into the ancient historical record. In a spectacularly delirious finale, the kingdom is trampled and destroyed by a once constructive and now bloodthirsty team.

The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project epitomizes Glynn’s persistent use of classical antiquity to refract truths about contemporary society. The artist initiated what became months of intensive research for this project as a response to the re-building of post-Katrina New Orleans and war-ravaged Iraq, in which contexts the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is often cited. Rome’s political and military history is, of course, inscribed into its architecture, making this project more than an investigation of streets and buildings; Glynn is touring us through the life and death of a world and a people.

The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project was presented in 2008 . . . at Machine Project, an alternative space in Los Angeles and in the recent exhibition, "The Generational: Younger than Jesus," at the New Museum, New York. Glynn’s iteration of the project at Arthouse has been customized and “Texas-sized”—that is, conceived on a much larger scale and augmented with many additional activities. . . .

Sounds cool; more at the link above.

World's Stocks Controlled by Few

A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

"You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense," Glattfelder said. “From that you're able to . . . unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn't at all important."

The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston's analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.

More at InsideScience.org.

Vitreous Viruses

by Luke Jerram. The sculptures will be exhibited at The Smithfield Gallery, London, Sept. 21 - Oct. 3. More info at the artist's site.

Jerram also has an interesting-sounding book coming out soon, Art in Mind.

The sculptures remind me of Texas artist Jen Rose's STD Glasses (2004) – drinking glasses with portraits of Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Herpes microbes etched on them.

Re- Facebook

Great article at ReadWriteWeb, "What Facebook Quizzes Know About You":

"[M]illions of Facebook users taking quizzes are revealing far more personal information to application developers than they are aware of. . . . whether or not your profile is set to 'private.' Even worse, the ACLU reports that even if you shun quizzes yourself, your profile info is revealed when one of your friends takes a quiz. Want to see how bad the problem is? Just take the ACLU's Facebook Quiz and prepare to be shocked."

(Emphasis supplied.) "Application developers" means, of course, anyone who develops quiz or other application for use on FB, including various Big Bros. and, potentially, crooks.

"[U]sers can limit how much information applications (including friends' applications) can see by tweaking their privacy settings. . . . To do this yourself, go to Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Applications [-> Settings]. From there, you can uncheck the boxes next to the items which you don't want apps to have access to."

Note: if you've ever taken any FB quizzes or used any other apps, you'll need first to go to the Applications page and uncheck all the applications with x's across from them (which are still authorized to share all your info).

From a friend who teaches

"My student was showing us his tattoos. He has his mother's name on each arm – first name on left, last name on right. I said, 'Oh, how sweet! Why did you get your mother's name on your arms?' He said – completely deadpan – 'That's the only way she'd let me get a tattoo.'"

(Thanks, Deb!)